Italian President Giorgio Napolitano resigned Wednesday, the presidential office said in a statement. The secretary general of the head of state's office, Donato Marra, left the presidential palace to hand the resignation to Premier Matteo Renzi and the Speakers of the Lower House and Senate.
Napolitano, 89, became the first former communist to be elected head of State in 2006. He made history again in 2013, when he reluctantly agreed to become to the first Italian president to be re-elected to avert a political crisis, after parliament failed to vote in a successor.
Napolitano always said that he would not serve all of his second seven-year term, but vowed to guarantee stability in the country's top institutional positions throughout Italy's duty presidency of the EU, which ended Tuesday.
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